(9.1) Can I install Solaris x86 on a system that already has
MS Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP/2003
(among other systems)?

When you run the Solaris install program, it will ask you which partition you
wish to use. On your boot disk all you need to do is to create another
partition on your existing disk. You use GRUB to boot to choose to boot
to Solaris or another operating system, such as MS Windows.

To shrink an existing MS-DOS/MS Windows partition, if you need to make room,
use something like Partition Magic or Linux ntfsresize.
ntfsresize is also available for Solaris from
FSWfsmisc

The general idea is that you copy the first sector of your native root
Solaris/x86 partition into a file in the DOS/MS Windows NT/2K partition.
Assuming you name that file something like c:\bootsect.sun
(inspired by c:\bootsect.dos)
you can edit file c:\boot.ini
(after saving boot.ini to boot.old):
to come up with something like this:

The "multi(0)" means that it's an ATAPI drive and so for the ATAPI drives,
the "disk(0)" is ignored.
The "rdisk(1)partition(1)" means Solaris is on the first partition of the
second drive on the first IDE channel.

This procedure assumes that DOS and NT have been installed onto the first
ATAPI disk and Solaris/x86 or whatever have been onto the second disk
(use scsi(0) and place the SCSI ID in disk(x) for SCSI drives).
Note that in order to use the Windows NT boot loader, the NT partition must
be the active boot partition. Solaris/x86 must also be the active boot
partition, so must reside on another disk (This may be another reason
to use a commercial product, System Commander--see question below).

dd if=/dev/rdsk/c0d0p0 of=/mnt/bootsect.sun bs=512 count=1
# (Note: The above is for ATAPI; use /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0p0 for SCSI.)

If the Solaris partition is on a separate drive (as in this example),
you need to modify file bootsect.sun to tell it the boot drive.
The instructions below are for Solaris 7 or earlier
The bootsect.sun code assumes the drive ID is preloaded into the
x86 DL register before the bootsect.sun is executed.
This is done by the BIOS, but not the NT loader.
The easiest way to fix this is to modify the bootsect.sun code with a
binary file editor.
The first instruction is a jump
over the next 4 bytes, the ASCII version ID ("P2.0" in this case).
Use a binary editor to
overwrite this with a
"MOV DL,0x81" instruction and some NOPs.
I.e., I changed the first six bytes in my bootsect.sun from
"eb 04 50 32 2e 30"
to "b2 81 90 90 90 90"
(in hex)
and saved it in file bootsect.sun.
Another person's bootsector began with eb 79 . . .
and he changed the first 4 bytes to b2 81 eb 77 to get it to work.
Some useful drive IDs are: 0x00 for the floppy drive, 0x80 for the
1st hard drive, and 0x81 for the 2nd hard drive.

Reboot into NT.
Copy the bootsect.sun file from the floppy to C:\, if you haven't done so yet.
Modify the DOS/NT attributes (permissions) on boot.ini with:

attrib -s -r c:\boot.ini

Edit to add the appropriate entries from the example boot.ini above,
and restore the system and read-only file attributes:
attrib +s +r c:\boot.ini

An alternative to the Solaris "dd" command above is to
use the "postcard-ware" program BootPart 2.2 from
http://www.winimage.com/bootpart.htm.
E.g.,
the following displays the partitions, then
creates a boot sector file bootsect.sun and adds "Solaris" to the NT
loader menu. Edit bootsect.sun as above.

Mounting NTFS in Solaris is supported by mount_ntfs, by Martin Rosenau,
and packages FSWfsmisc and FSWfspart, by Moinak Ghosh
(and based on Martin Rosenau's work and part of Moinak's BeleniX work).
I use and recommend FSWfsmisc/FSWfspart as it allows mount directly from the
mount(1M) command and /etc/vfstab, supports extended partitions,
and supports NTFS.
Both are explained below and both
work with Solaris 10 and 11.

Download the package file for FSWfsmisc/FSWfspart from
http://www.belenix.org/binfiles/FSWpart.tar.gz
and
http://www.belenix.org/binfiles/FSWfsmisc.tar.gz
and install the two packages (pkgadd).
Use prtpart to display the partitions and mount to mount the NTFS partition. For example, I use this command:
mount -F ntfs /dev/dsk/c0d0p1 /c
If you have this line in /etc/fstab you can mount with just mount /c/dev/dsk/c0d0p1 - /c ntfs - no ro
(change the mount point, /c, and partition c0d0p1 for your system).
Here's the output from mount and FSWfsmisc's xlsmounts:

Yes.
If you use Solaris 10 or greater, it's no problem--as they use different
partition IDs (0x82 for Linux and 0xBF for Solaris).
Unfortunately, Solaris 9 and earlier and Linux swap partitions use the same ID,
0x82, so be careful.

For the most part, both Linux and Solaris use GRUB to boot load the OS.
Linux and Solaris GRUB both live
at the beginning of the partition and in the /boot/grub/ directory.
Solaris GRUB can boot to either Linux or Solaris directly.
Linux GRUB can't boot to Solaris directly, as it doesn't have the
Solaris modifications (at least yet). But Linux GRUB can "chain load"
to Solaris GRUB.
The following is a sample entry to chain load Solaris GRUB from Linux GRUB:

If you get this error message mounting a NSFv4 filesystem from a Linux server
on a Solaris client:
nfs mount: mount: /netdrive: Not owner
then the problem is NFSv4 support is broken in Linux.
There's two solutions for this:

(9.9)
How can I boot both Solaris/x86 and Win XP/2000/NT on the same disk?

With Solaris 10 Update 1 and above, GRUB is the boot loader for Solaris.
GRUB allows you to boot to one out of multiple operating systems on your
disk, whether Solaris or non-Solaris.
The Windows partition is automatically recognized and added to
your GRUB menu. For example, here's my entry:

title Windows
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
chainloader +1

Active partition:
You must set the Solaris partition to be ACTIVE in order to make it boot to
Solaris. MS Windows doesn't have to be active to boot. If you make the
Windows partition active, it will only boot to windows and not use GRUB.

Where c0 is the controller number.
t0 is the target (SCSI ID number) (omit for ATAPI)
d0 is always 0 for SCSI, the drive # for ATAPI
p0 is the partition (p0 is the entire disk, or p1 - p4)
/mnt is the mount point
:1 is the logical drive (c - z or 1 - 24)

Omit the Solaris "slice" number (e.g., "s0") for DOS partitions.
You can use the normal UNIX commands to copy files, 'cp', etc.,
after that to move the data. DOS filenames are in the
long filename format (mixed case, with optional lower case only)
for Solaris 7 and higher.
DOS 8.3 names are in UPPER case unless you use
the "-o foldcase" option, which folds all UPPER case and mixed case
names to lower case (see man mount_pcfs(1M) for details).

Note: The "mount -F pcfs . . ."
command won't mount a FAT16 partition
if it was fdisk-ed and format-ted with
MS Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP/2003
(at least for Solaris 2.6 and earlier.
Any reports with Solaris 7/8?).
Use DOS 6.x. HPFS (OS/2), FAT64 (Win NT), or NTFS (Win NT/2K/XP/2003)
partitions are not mountable under Solaris at all.
FAT32 (Win 9x/ME/2K/XP/2003)
are mountable with Solaris 7.
There's some reports of not being able
to mount FAT32 partitions if it's not the first partition.

To mount the partitions automatically, put something like this in
/etc/vfstab:

This mounts the DOS partitions (assuming it's the first partition) on /c
and /d, respectively, on startup. For more info, see "man pcfs"

[From Bob Palowoda's Solaris 2.4 x86 FAQ]

Note: p0 refers to the first primary partition and p1, p2, . . . refers
to the logical DOS partitions found in the extended DOS partition.
Solaris/x86 does NOT support DOS directly in the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th primary
partition of a disk. See BugID 1170107. Furthermore, Solaris/x86 does
NOT support more than one Solaris fdisk partition on a physical disk
nor more than 8 Solaris "slices" on a Solaris fdisk partition.

Yes and no.
BootMagic can be setup to boot Solaris partitions, since it dynamically
marks the partition as active. The setup, however, doesn't
automatically recognize these partitions as Solaris (but as Linux Swap
partitions).

PowerQuest's PartitionMagic can copy and move Solaris
Partitions, with a low-level sector-by-sector copy.
It cannot enlarge or shrink the Solaris Partition,
which actually contain multiple "slices" of various Solaris ufs file systems.
Furthermore, after a partition copy, the boot block needs to be restored.
See the question elsewhere in this
FAQ "How do I restore the Solaris boot block without reinstalling?"

Grant Chivers provides these instructions to
install Solaris on a Windows/Linux system with the PowerQuest Partition Editor:

Before installing Solaris use Ptedit, that comes with PowerQuest's
Partition Magic, to write out a copy of all the data about the existing
partitions because a Solaris install will change all this.

If there are Linux Swap partitions (type 83) I change them to "Hidden ext2
partitions" (type 93), then reverse this after Solaris installation completed(this is only needed for Solaris 9 and earlier, as Solaris partitions now use type BF starting with Solaris 10).

If installing Solaris to free disk space, I suggest you first create a
partition (any type, such as OS/2) on the free disk space
to get the hard disk data settings
that will be used for the Solaris partition.
Then delete the partition to regain free disk space
(or use the Solaris fdisk when it prompts during install).

Using volume management, type "volcheck". This forces Solaris to poll
the diskette drive (and other drives). The diskette drive isn't
polled automatically (unlike the CD-ROM), as it would quickly wear it out.
You should see something like this typing "mount":

To unmount using volume management, type "eject". After a message, you
can manually eject the floppy safely.

You can also mount the diskette in a similar way to hard drive partitions
without using volume management (the old way):

mount -F pcfs /dev/diskette /mnt

Don't forget to turn of the volume management before you try to
do this from the command line or you'll get a "device busy"
message. "/etc/init.d/volmgt stop" will stop the volume
manager. To restart the volume manager, "/etc/init.d/volmgt start".

(9.14) How can I make my Solaris files easily available to
MS Windows on a network?

Solaris PC NetLink
provides "a complete set of Windows NT Network Services,"
which includes SAMBA-type NT naming, file, print, directory, and security
services for Windows 3.11/95/98/NT clients.
It is based on Microsoft NT 4 code licensed
via AT&T ("Advanced Server for Unix").
It used to be available for Solaris/x86, but is now available only for
Sun Enterprise servers.

In any case I prefer SAMBA for Solaris 10 or earlier, or Solaris SMB for Solaris 11.
SAMBA is a robust, open source package that provides
SMB services (aka MS Windows networking) from UNIX.
This allows LAN-Manager-type browsing and "Connect Network Drive,"
and provides access to UNIX print servers.
SAMBA can act as a file, print, browser master, and WINS servers, but not as
a domain controller (that's in the works).
SAMBA also serves files faster than NetLink (or Windows, for that matter).
However, NetLink implements SMB better than SAMBA, since it uses
Microsoft-licensed code, while SAMBA must reverse-engineer the code.
SAMBA is provided with Solaris 9 and later.
For the SAMBA FAQ, sources, binaries, and other information,
see the SAMBA web page at:
http://samba.anu.edu.au/samba/

OpenSolaris SMB allows files to be shared on MS Windows.
To enable add this line to /etc/pam.conf :

Change "myshare" to the name of the root directory you're sharing.
Then use passwd(1) to set any passwords you'll be using in MS Windows
(old passwords set before pam.conf is modified are not used).
On MS Windows, go to Windows Explorer or My Computer and, from the Tools menu,
select "Map Network Drive": \\myhostname\myshare. Change myhostname to your OpenSolaris hostname and myshare to the root directory being shared.
Login with the username and password set with passwd, above.
No guest login is allowed.

Sun has a commercial product, Solstice LM Manager, that works (poorly)
with MS LAN Manager/SMB and links in with NIS/DNS.

(9.15) How can I access files on a remote MS Windows, SMB,
or SAMBA share?

You can't use mount or smbmount, as on Linux,
because no Solaris kernel driver is available. You can use smbsh, smbclient,
or Sharity as workarounds. For example,
"smbclient //servernamehere/sharenamehere"
then type "get somefilename to access a file.
smbsh allows SMB file access through UNIX commands, such as ls or egrep,
from your UNIX shell. The shell must be dynamically linked in order
for this to work (which is the typical case). To use type "smbsh"
then access your SMB files from "/smb/groupnamehere/servernamehere

If you use GNOME, Nautilus has the ability to browse SMB shares,
but you can't open the file directly. You drag (copy) files from a SMB share
to your local disk (and vice versa).

Another solution is to us NFS instead of SMB. Get a file server
(Network Attached Storage, NAS) that supports NFS.
If accessing from windows, download MS Windows
"Services for Unix," which supports NFS, at
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/sfu/

The best solution may be Sharity-Light from Objective Development.
It's open source, GNU licensed that runs in user (not kernel) space
using the Solaris NFS kernel interface. See
http://www.obdev.at/products/sharity-light/
for details. Here's how I mount a SMB share with sharity:
shlight //mazama/d /d -n

Objective Development also has a commercial product, Sharity,
which also provides SMB server functions, at
http://www.obdev.at/products/sharity/
Sharity works with 32-bit x86, but not 64-bit.

(9.16) How can I make my Solaris files easily available to
an Apple Macintosh on a network?

Upgrade to MacOS X, which has native support for NFS and Microsoft SMB.

Or use CAP, an excellent open source AppleTalk server software for UNIX.
The Columbia AppleTalk Package (CAP) implements the AppleTalk protocol stack
on UNIX The main applications provide an AppleShare 2.1 compatible server
(aufs), a LaserWriter Spooler (lwsrv) and a program to print to
LaserWriters (papif). For more information, see:
http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/appletalk/cap.html

No. SunPCi is an add-on card and software for Solaris on SPARC only.
SunPC emulates a PC with the card and Caldera's "DR-DOS" allowing
Windows 3.1/9x
to be installed on top of it.
The card has a 300 MHz K6-2 AMD processor and RAM.
It emulates hard and floppy drives, serial ports,
SuperVGA, mouse, keyboard, etc.
Generally, SunPCi or it's older cousin, SunPC, emulates the
PC environment OK, although it performs more slowly than a straight PC
(your mileage may vary). Software that requires a parallel port
hardware key (dongle) won't work.

The Lxrun program, originally written for
SCO, is now available on Solaris/x86.
The Lxrun emulator allows one to execute Linux binaries,
both in ELF and a.out Linux formats.
Linux ext2 read-only filesystem support from Solaris (mount/unmount)
is included with either package FSWfsmisc or ext2fs.tar.gz.

To install, first install package SFWlxrun from the
Solaris Software Companion CD.
Setup or mount a ext2fs filesystem, say at /linux (as explained
in a question below on ext2fs).

To avoid prefixing Linux filenames with "/linux/"
(or wherever your ext2fs is mounted), and setup a PATHMAP file
(to map Linux filenames to Solaris names).
For Sun's SFWlxrun version of lxrun, type this, as root, to set it up:
(cd /usr/sfw/lib; cp -p PATHMAP-style2 PATHMAP)
For other builds of lxrun, PATHMAP may be at
/usr/local/lxrun/PATHMAP.
The file location can also be changed with environment variable $PATHMAP.

lxrun has been replaced with BrandZ in Solaris 10, which allows one to
run Linux 2.4-based software on a Solaris "Branded" Zone (or "Container").
The focus is on running Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and CentOS.

After installation, run the command /usr/sbin/rtc -z $TZ, where $TZ
is your timezone. The default root crontab runs /usr/sbin/rtc -c daily.
That way your clock will give the proper time whether you boot Solaris
or MS-DOS/MS Windows.

If you're running Windows NT and find the clock "overadjusted" twice a year
(that is, it gains or loses an extra hour),
you should comment out (with a "#")
the "rtc" line in file /var/spool/cron/crontabs/root.

There's no way to run a SPARC binary on an x86 machine unless you
have an emulator for the SPARC CPU.
Transitive, http://www.transitive.com/ has emulation software that runs SPARC software on x86.

(9.21)
Will my old applications from SVR3 or SCO run on Solaris 2/x86?

Solaris x86 has an emulation mode that should run the majority of
well-behaved SVR3 (including SCO UNIX), and SCO Xenix binaries.
Most SVR3 stuff appears to work under Solaris 2.4.

Applications from any other vendor's standards-conforming 386/486 SVR4
should also run. The main standard being iBCS (Intel Binary
Compatibility Standard).

However, some vendors have made incompatible changes to their
SVR4 release and programs linked on those versions may not work.
Future versions of Solaris 2.x for Intel will address some/most
of those incompatibilities. UNIXWare is one of the offenders.

[From Casper Dik's Solaris 2 FAQ]

Linux binaries will run with the assistance of
lxrun (see the lxrun question above).

(9.22)
Will my application from Solaris/SPARC work on Solaris/x86?
I have the source.

Yes and no. Generally applications that don't make assumptions about
computer architecture will work. That is, code shouldn't depend on
structure or union alignments, or in what order a number appears in a
word ("big endian" SPARC or "little endian" Intel).
Don't use functions labeled SPARC or x86 only in the man pages.
In other words, "well-behaved" C (or other
language) programs should recompile fine.

This says that Solaris lives in the 2nd partition (hda2), slices 0 to 7.
These Solaris slices are mapped to virtual partitions hda5 to hda11.

To mount a partition, type something like this:

mount -r -t ufs -o ro,ufstype=sunx86 /dev/hda5 /mnt

This will mount the root slice (s0) on /mnt read-only.

Warning: Softlinks that are relative to root
(e.g., /usr/local pointing to /local)
will point to the wrong place.
To avoid this problem, change these links in
Solaris to relative soft-links (e.g., /usr/local to ../local).

This can be automated with /etc/fstab.
If you don't want the partitions mounted at boot, add ",noauto"
after "defaults,ro" (no space). If you want non-root users to be able
to mount partitions, add ",user" (careful!):

If, when you type "dmesg" above, you don't see Solaris partitions
recognized, you might have to rebuild your Linux kernel. Be sure
to specify "y" in /usr/src/linux/.config when you type "make config":

CONFIG_UFS_FS=y
CONFIG_SOLARIS_x86_PARTITION=y

Linux 2.2 has experimental write support to Solaris partitions.
If you get this message when mounting in read-write mode:
"... ufs_read_super: fs needs fsck"
then UFS function ufs_read_super somehow decided the fs isn't clean,
and therefore set the RDONLY bit.
Type something like this to re-mount in read/write mode
(replace "hda5" with your file system):

mount -o remount,rw /dev/hda5

There's another Linux kernel configuration question,
CONFIG_SMD_DISKLABEL, that applies only to
Sparc Solaris disks, which are in yet another format.
The answer to that question doesn't matter for Solaris/x86 filesystems.

Yes. You can do this wither with Moinak Ghosh's FSWfsmisc/FSWfspart
(for Solaris 10 or 11, developed as part of Moinak's BeleniX work)
or with the older ext2fs (Solaris 7-10).
I use and recommend FSWfsmisc as it works better with extended partitions
and also mounts NTFS filesystems.
I use and recommend FSWfsmisc/FSWfspart as it allows mount directly from the
mount(1M) command and /etc/vfstab, supports extended partitions,
supports NTFS filesystems,
and supports 32-bit and AMD64 Solaris.
Both FSWfsmisc and ext2fs are explained below.

Once you found and mounted the correct Linux partition, add
and add an entry to /etc/vfstab similar to one of the following.
For SCSI, it might look like this:
/dev/dsk/c0t0d0p1 - /linux ext2fs - no ro
For ATAPI, it might look like this (no "t0"):
/dev/dsk/c0d0p1 - /linux ext2fs - no ro
(Use "yes" instead of "no" if you want it mounted automatically at boot).
For an extended partition and ATAPI, it might look like this:
/dev/dsk/c0d0p2:1 - /linux ext2fs - no ro
where p2 means the extended partition (type 0x05) is partition 2 (out of 1-4) and ":1" is the 2nd extended partition (:0 would be the first extended partition).

Repeat for other Linux filesystems, if desired.

Once you mount a ext2fs filesystem,
you can execute Linux programs using lxrun (see the question on lxrun, above).

You can also backup a ntfs filesystem partition with ntfsclone.
For example, here's how I backup the NTFS partition on my laptop to a
removable hard drive or NFS filesystem:

[Thanks to
Moinak Ghosh for FSWfsmisc (Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris),
Paul Floyd for the Solaris 9 and 10 ports,
and Mike Sullivan for the Solaris 8 port.
Neither I nor they take any responsibility for errors with this
unsupported software.]

StarOffice,
produced by a German subsidiary of Sun,
supports MS Word, basic PowerPoint, Excel files, and other formats.
StarOffice 7 is available for US $79.95 at computer stores and
http://www.Sun.COM/staroffice/
StarOffice is my preferred word processor because it's available on
multiple platforms, including Solaris x86,
because it has a familiar MS Office-type interface.
Educational
(.EDU-affiliated) individuals can obtain StarOffice and a number of
other software packages via the EduSoft program for free.
See "Individuals" at
http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/edu/promotions/edusoft/

Open Office,
http://www.openoffice.org/
an open-source spin-off from StarOffice, is free.
It doesn't contain some components of Star Office
(such as some fonts, macros, and clip art and a better spell-checker),
but is perfectly acceptable for casual use.
Solaris x86 binaries are available, as are SPARC, Windows, Linux
and Apple Mac OSx.

AbiWord is also available for
Solaris x86.
AbiWord only does word processing, but I understand it has
all the basic functionality.
I have no personal experience with it however.
It's available in source form only, so you have to build
it yourself (download the gcc compiler).
See the question below on building Abiword for Solaris.

Corel WordPerfect 8, although getting a little "long in the tooth"
(outdated), it is still available. WordPerfect for UNIX supports
WordPerfect, Word (old and new), HTML, RTF, FrameMaker, Applix,
and several other document formats.
Price varies and it's not cheap.
There's no Sparc Intel binary available, but some people run
Linux Intel binary on Solaris using lxrun software
(see elsewhere in this fax).
See
http://www.corel.com/wpunix/

The VistaSource's Anyware Office suite can read Word files,
among other formats, as above,
and comes with a spreadsheet and other applications. I still prefer
WordPerfect for word processing, but Applix Office offers a broader array
of applications.
Applix Office is also getting "long in the tooth."
See
http://www.vistasource.com/

You can also try wv (free), which converts Word 8 (Office 97), but
not older, Word files to HTML. WordView is available in source form
(mostly Perl and some C) from
http://www.wvWare.com/

For the above software, more complicated Word format files cannot be
converted, especially those saved with "Quick Save" enabled.
Be aware that these office suites seem to require systems with 128MB of
memory or more to perform reasonably (in my experience).

Some builds of Mozilla for Solaris (unfortunately) require a Xprint
server to be running before you can print from Mozilla.
This is true if you get a message saying no Xprint servers were found
when you try to print.
To enable Xprint, I added these lines in my .profile shell initialization file:

Also, change default-printer-resolution
from 300 to 600 (or higher) in file
/usr/openwin/server/etc/XpConfig/C/print/attributes/document
if the printer output is too small.

(9.29)
Can I mount other ufs disks, say from BSDi/FreeBSD, and vice versa?

Maybe. First, although Solaris, BSDi, FreeBSD, and NetBSD share a
common-heritage file system, the Berkeley-style ufs, Solaris has made
extensions. The 32-bit UID field has been modified in Solaris to be
a pointer to a parallel "Shadow inode" with Solaris ACL information.
Also, the superblock has an additional inode field in Solaris and 2 fields
have different byte swappings.

Reportedly, you can mount, say, zip disks from FreeBSD, on Solaris by
doing a fsck on them before mounting. Fsck makes these fields Solaris-
compatible. Your mileage may vary and you should test this (in both
directions) before trying this on live data.

(9.30) How can I use a disk partition on Solaris 2.x
which was previously dedicated to
MS Windows 9x/ME/NT/2K/XP/2003
(or other OS) as dual boot?

On Solaris 2.x, use fdisk to find your disk partition table.
For example, on an ATAPI drive,
# fdisk /dev/rdsk/c0d0p0
would show something like the following:

Where "Partition 1" was used for Windows 95. It was deleted and recreated
with "Solaris" type.

Make a ufs filesystem on the partition. (You can not subdivide this
fdisk partition into Solaris slices).
For example,
# mkfs -F ufs /dev/rdsk/c0d0p1 4192965
where number 4192965 = 261 * 16065 is the total number of blocks on
this partition, calculated as the cylinder length on this partition
(261 from the above partition table) times the cylinder size (16065
blocks as shown in the header of the partition table.)

Use these Solaris commands:
dos2unix<dosformatfile> <unixformatfile>unix2dos<unixformatfile> <dosformatfile>
The former removes the ^M and ^Z characters and the latter adds them.
See man dos2unix and man unix2dos for details.

Yes.
VMware
is commercial software to allow one to boot and use multiple
operating systems at the same time, such as Linux and Windows 2000.
This is done by creating a "virtual machine" for each OS.
VMware provides graphical (VGA/SVGA) and X display
capabilities. For networking, VMware provides
for a "virtual disk" for the client O/S. It also
can provide access to the floppy, CD-ROM, a virtual
NIC and a virtual sound blaster 16. Note, the
CD-ROM is a "virtual" ATAPI CD-ROM.
Networking can be either host-based (private IP
space and TCP/IP + SMB between the host O/S and
the client O/S), or bridged (client uses an address
on the actual network, host's NIC is bound to
two or more IP addresses).

VMware doesn't have documentation on installing Solaris x86,
but you can use these notes instead:

Please read the other HOWTOs on the
VMware site, http://www.vmware.com/
before installing Solaris x86.
My install of version 7 on the dual PII 300 took about 1 hour.
I have tested Solaris x86 version 7 (11/99 release)
with VMware 2.0.1 with a Linux host. The host is a
dual PII/300 with 128 MB of RAM. Solaris under
VMware seems stable (it has been up for days).
The host was setup with Linux (RedHat 6.2, patches,
and 2.2.16). VMware was installed and bridged networking
was enabled. Bridged networking allows the virtual
machine to appear as a host on the local LAN.
The CDROM, Floppy and virtual NIC were enabled.

Create a virtual disk for Solaris using VMware.
I used 1GB on a free partition.
When creating a virtual machine, VMware will ask you to select the guest
OS type.
Since Solaris is not currently a selection, use Windows 98.
That has seemed to work best for most folks.`

Insert the Solaris x86 boot floppy and boot CD-ROM
in the host computer. Start vmware and "power on"
the virtual machine. The virtual machine should
boot from the floppy and run the Solaris hardware
detection program.

I am using my virtual Solaris as a test NISPLUS
server so I enabled NISPLUS and set the server to
point to this machine. Following install, I setup
NISPLUS on the virtual Solaris and all seems functional.

Setup X as VGA. It appears to work fine. However,
I typically use my virtual Solaris in text mode and
export xterms to my base O/S (Linux). Someone
suggested that you try a Linux or other XF86 server
but I have not tried this. The vmware server
for Linux may work. If anyone does this could they
please mail me instructions on what they did?

Sometimes the Solaris install is very unhappy with the VirtualFloppy drive.
Just disable it for your Solaris config if it gives you grief. One of the
symptoms of this may be a VMware panic dialog box during the install.

I recommend you either a) Setup Solaris with an FTP Server ASAP or
b) Insure you have an FTP server on the same network.
This is the quickest way to get files in and out of a virtual machine --
especially until you get DNS working properly.

Solaris x86 currently does not use the HLT instruction
in the idle loop (a post indicated this will change
in the future). This causes the virtual machine to
try to use 100% of your CPU (or on an SMP machine,
100% of a single CPU as VMware only emulates
an UP machine). This makes a virtual Solaris only
really usable as a server on an SMP machine.

A "volcheck" followed by a "mount" resulted in
a strange "unimplemented" error from VMware. However,
the CDROM appeared to be properly mounted.

There are no VMware tools for Solaris x86. There is
no VMware X server.

Since there are no VMware tools for Solaris, the best resolution/color combo
you can get out of the box is 640x400, 16 colors. However, you can use remote
access programs (VNC is highly recommended) to set up a console "server"
that you can connect to with a remote "client". I have used VNC to access my
Solaris VM at any resolution and a color depth of 32. Accessing the Virtual
Machine via VNC not only looks better because of the color and resolution,
it is faster than using Solaris the native way it comes out of the box.

Xen is an open source virtual machine emulator from Cambridge.
It is faster than VMWare, and free, but requires modifications of the
guest operating system.
Solaris x86 does not support it, but may in the future.
According to a CNET article on 2/18/2006, Sun's John Fowler said
"We think the open-source virtual hypervisor is the way to go."
Future hardware modifications by Intel ("Vanderpool Technology" or VT)
and AMD may permit Solaris to run with no modifications.
See
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/

(9.33)
Is Solaris on Intel really "Slowaris"--slower
than other Intel-based operating systems?

By default, the other free OS's aren't SMP very capable out of the box--Solaris
is. Solaris handles multiple processes and threads easily in a SMP system.
So, one single CPU system, Solaris has a fair amount on un-necessary
overhead--which slows it down a bit.

Because the other OSes don't have this capability, or at least don't use it to
full advantage, they have a bit of a
performance advantage on a single CPU machine.
This advantage disappears when you start adding processors.

So, I think Slowaris is a little bit too far, but it is at a bit of a
performance disadvantage.
But on an 2GHz processor, who cares?! Odds are you'll just be idling
very quickly!

Update: a benchmark test by Tony Bourke
ran Solaris x86 9 against Linux 2.4 (RedHat 9).
He concluded Solaris x86 and Linux performed the same,
except with web operations,
where Linux was about twice as fast.
Both systems had the latest updates.
See
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=4867&page=1

If you have another Operating System installed, boot into the other
operating system (usually Windows or Linux).
Select the current (non-Solaris) partition as
the "Active" partition. Reboot. If the computer boots into the
other operating system without the Solaris boot menu, you can safely
delete the Solaris partition.

If you have no other Operating System installed, simply install another
operating system over Solaris on the hard drive.
Select "Entire disk" or similar during the installation.

(9.35)
I can install Linux on a system with Solaris x86, but why can't I boot it?

One possibility is because
Linux kernels with UFS filesystem support will rearrange the numbering of
the extended partitions in certain circumstances.
Look at the following partition map reported by Linux during booting:

Partition number 4 (hda4) is an "extended" partition, containing three
logical partitions used by Linux. In this particular case, these logical
partitions were created by the Red Hat Linux 7 installer, and they hold
the Linux root filesystem, swap space, and a filesystem mounted on
/home.

The kernel used by the installer did not include UFS support, so it
perceived /dev/hda4 to logically contain hda5, hda6, and hda7,
and it recorded these settings with LILO and /etc/fstab.

However, when the new Linux installation booted for the first time, it
assigned hda5 to a Solaris partition, then tried to boot with it as the
root filesystem. Under Red Hat Linux 7 with the 2.2.16 kernel, this
generates the following error:

To boot this system, provide LILO with something like
"linux single root=/dev/hda9" to force the proper selection of the
root filesystem
(or you could also boot from the install CD with options like
"linux single root=/dev/hda9 initrd="),
then modify the root filesystem parameter in /etc/lilo.conf
to reflect the change (and run the "lilo"
command after modifying the file):

image=/boot/vmlinuz-2.2.16-22
label=linux
read-only
root=/dev/hda9

Under most Linux distributions, you must also modify /etc/fstab
to reflect the new partition layout.
Red Hat Linux 7 now uses "labels" in /etc/fstab
(which are maintained with the "e2label" command), which obviates the need
to adjust /etc/fstab in this case
(you still may need to adjust the swap
partition in /etc/fstab, though).

If the extended partition has a lower number than the
Solaris partition, this renumbering won't occur.

s0 - s15 16 slices in the Solaris FDISK partition
(SPARC has only 8)
On Solaris, by convention,
s2 is the whole Solaris partition.

For the first part of the name, e.g. c0t0d2:

"c" is the disk controller number as seen by the operating system

"t" is the target number on the controller.
That is, SCSI ID for SCSI. Omitted for ATAPI.
controllers

"d" is the disk on that target.
That is, LUN for SCSI, Master (d0) or Slave (d1) for ATAPI.

The precise naming for IDE disks and ATAPI cdroms has varied through
Solaris x86 releases, and is different on SPARC. On x86, the 't' part
is often missing for IDE disks as IDE doesn't support multiple
targets (the Master is the single target and it drives the Slave too,
so these look more like SCSI LUNs). However, the IDE ATAPI interface
looks more like SCSI, so you can find the Master disk has an IDE type
name, and the ATAPI slave CDROM has a SCSI type of name. On SPARC, I
think both IDE disks and ATAPI CDROMs are named like SCSI disks.
This area is a bit of a mess, sadly.

The pcfs filesystem also has a pseudo naming scheme it uses. You
always use the p0 (whole disk) device, but you append more info which
enables pcfs to find the right PC filesystem on the disk. So,
p0:1 is the first DOS drive on the disk, which will be the primary
DOS partition if there is one or the first DOS drive in the Extended
DOS partition. p0:2 is the second DOS drive -- if there was a primary
DOS partition, p0:2 will be the first DOS drive in the Extended DOS
partition, otherwise it's the second DOS drive in the Extended DOS
partition. There's a hack in there in to cope with multiple primary
DOS FDISK partitions too, but such a disk is strictly illegal.
p0:boot is the Solaris x86 boot partition if you have one, which is
like a primary DOS partition but with a different partition type.

OpenSolaris is open source Solaris,
based on the OSI-approved Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL).
It seeks to emulate the Linux distribution model.
Some Solaris software is still closed source
(see the Roadmap on the OpenSolaris site).
See
http://www.opensolaris.org/
for more information.

Abiword is a basic word processor available from
http://www.abisource.com/
It can be compiled with Sun's cc and GNU gcc with the following instructions.
The 2.2 and 2.4 versions compile on Solaris, but not 2.6.

Compiling with gcc (gcc-3.4.4)

Set the environment variable CC to gcc.
Change the option -mt to -pthreads (-mt is supported only on cc, I think).

Make the following changes to the source:
~/abiword/abi/src/af/util/xp/ut_iconv.cpp, line 73-75.
The original definition of
UT_ICONV is "", which causes g++ to exit with a gmake error.
To fix, change UT_ICONV to "const".

Same as above, but no need to set either the environment or make the change
with pthreads. It is necessary to make the other changes I have listed above.
./configure --with-libiconv="path_of_libiconv" -with-libpng="path_of_libpng"

gmake && gmake install
should install abiword.

[Thanks to Nagesh Subbanna]

This FAQ is provided "as is" in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law; without even the
implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.